Celestine had gone out of her way to visit the frontier village, but... naturally, she did not stay at the cottage where Rest and the others lived.
She had apparently rented a separate cottage, stayed there for one night, taken care of some business, and then returned to the royal capital.
For a free-spirited girl like Yuri, it might have been a different matter, but for a typical noble young lady, this was the only sensible choice.
As the duke's young lady—a standard-bearer of feminine grace, so lovely that even flowers would blush—there was no way she would commit the scandalous act of staying at a young man's home.
(Setting that aside... as I thought, what Celestine told me is still nagging at me...)
Sanada Shoko.
That was the false name the queen dowager had used in a certain land.
The name was unmistakably Japanese. It sounded like nothing other than a Japanese person's name.
(I had considered it a remote possibility, but... as I thought, Her Majesty the Queen Dowager was one of us after all...!)
He had been troubled by this for some time.
Frederica Aiwood, the queen dowager, had been born into a minor noble house, but she caught the tyrant's favor and was made his queen.
After that, she rallied several powerful figures to her side—including Celestine's grandfather and Marquis Eiger—and brought down the tyrant.
She was the one who laid the foundations of the current Kingdom of Aiwood.
Her ability to reshape an entire era, even as a woman, was reminiscent of Hojo Masako or Queen Elizabeth. Her accomplishments were grand enough to be the protagonist of a historical drama.
If someone told him she was a reincarnated person, he would find it entirely convincing.
(As I thought... there really were others. I never truly believed I was the only reincarnated person. Sure enough, there were more...!)
Rest had been thinking about this for some time now.
Whether he alone was special, or whether other reincarnated people existed out there as well...
Rest did not think highly enough of himself to believe that he alone had been chosen.
It wouldn't have been the least bit surprising if there were other reincarnated people as well.
(The queen dowager was remarkably skilled at winning people over, wasn't she... Selected as the wife of a tyrant, she brought numerous influential figures to her side... It wasn't like she had infinite mana like me, so perhaps some kind of charm or mental manipulation ability?)
She was already dead. There was no way to confirm anything.
Even so... if there was something he could do, it would be to investigate the land where the queen dowager had spent her final years.
The land the queen dowager had owned, which Rest had now inherited.
She had deliberately gone by the Japanese name "Sanada Shoko," so there was no doubt that place held special significance for the queen dowager.
If he investigated there, he was certain he would find some kind of clue.
(That said... I can't act right now. I'm in the middle of frontier development, after all... I can't just go running off on my own) He was curious about the queen dowager, but... Rest was currently a count.
Gaining a title meant shouldering the responsibilities that came with it.
He had been granted a domain as a count. That meant... he had to develop and manage it. That was a noble's duty.
If Rest up and left, it would cause trouble for someone else.
He couldn't very well act on his own selfish whims.
(I can't move right now, but... I have to find out. Why did Her Majesty the Queen Dowager spoil Rodele like that. The reason...!)
At this point, whether the queen dowager had been a reincarnated person or not was beside the point.
That was probably important too, but what Rest wanted to know more than anything was why the queen dowager had indulged Rodele to the point of twisting his personality.
Rodele was not, at his core, a rotten human being.
This was something Rest could say precisely because he had clashed with Rodele head-on.
Those who had actually suffered at his hands... classmates who had been charred to a crisp trying to stop him from making a move on their girlfriend, for instance... probably believed Rodele was a demon born that way.
As his fiancée, she had put up with him for years, causing trouble for— and Celestine, who had been harassed by him, surely disliked Rodele as well.
But even so, Rest couldn't help but think.
If only Rodele had been raised just a little more properly... if he had been the kind of person who could look at himself objectively... perhaps they could have become friends.
(Well, this is that kind of thing, isn't it... the sort where the more you dislike someone, the lonelier you feel once they're gone...)
Of course, he understood.
Rodele had been a villain. There was no denying that.
A person who only turns good in the movie version is plainly just an unpleasant person, no matter how you slice it.
A delinquent who causes trouble for people day in and day out gets praised the occasional time he does something good — from the perspective of someone living an honest life, that was nothing short of unfair.
Anyway... Rest decided he would look into the queen dowager once more.
Once the frontier development was wrapped up, he would travel to the land he had inherited — the place the queen dowager had used as a sort of vacation home — and conduct his investigation there.
To do that, he needed to bring the development to a stopping point.
In order to settle the area Rest was responsible for — the center of the plains — he would need to have a barrier put up.
(Once the barrier is in place and the mana in the center of the plains thins out, it will be safe. A lord of the demon realm will never be born. Even monsters can be driven away by the barrier... and once that's done, I can go investigate the land the queen dowager owned.)
And... the court magician skilled in erecting barriers would be arriving soon.
Rest had heard as much from Andrew.
"So... why are you the one here?"
Andrew's words were perfectly reasonable.
The court magician had arrived within a week of receiving Celestine's report.
"Lucas Eberun, honorary viscount... I never expected I would be meeting you here of all places."
"Nn..."
When Rest inadvertently narrowed his eyes in a glare, the court magician he was face-to-face with wore an awkward expression.
The man's name was Lucas Eberun.
To Rest, he was his biological father — the very man who had abandoned his mother and was the one responsible for abusing him.